Confessions of an everyday mystic

Tag Archives: christmas

It’s a lovely time of year. We’re in the middle of Hanukah, the Jewish festival of lights commemorating religious freedom and miracles in olden times. And of course many folks are experiencing the spirit of Christmas. And some celebrate Kwanza, or Winter Solstice or what have you. It feels like the time of year when we all, in our own ways, try to open our hearts to our fellows and celebrate our common humanity. Which is a lovely thing to do.

It’s a contrast from the rest of the year. In our everyday mentally we often walk around seeing everyone as distinct and separate. We may try to see a G-dly light emanating from their soul, but our picture of the world is usually like this:

Everyone doing their their best to shine forth their light. On a good day, we can give each other the benefit of the doubt and see that we’re all created in the image of G-d.

But for me, the miraculous beauty of this time of year is that we have an opportunity, when so many of us are opening our hearts, of seeing that we’re all in this together. We all breathe the same air, we live on the same planet, what we do affects each other in ways large and small, seen and unseen. And we all struggle with the daily choices we have, wherein we try to be the best person we can, we try to make the choices that we’ll look back on later and smile at a moment well lived, well done. And sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we wish we had a “do over”. But it’s the same for all of us, here on this earth, and our choices affect each other every day, from whether we hug our children to whether we smile at the passersby; whether we let someone into the lane ahead of us, or whether we visit the sick, aid the poor, comfort the distressed.

Because we’re all connected, we’re all in this together.

The reality of our situation, when we have the eyes of wisdom to see it, is really more like:

May we find it within our hearts to love our neighbor as our self during this holiday season.